Day 5 - Coinjock to Dowry Creek, NC

With a long travel day scheduled, we got going at first light, which today was at 7:15 a.m. It was quite entertaining to see all the boats pull off the Coinjock wall at the same time and head South, like migrating birds.

For most of the day, there were no entrances or exits from the river and the canal, so we were in a line of boats. Once the faster ones passed the slow ones, it was like a stretched-out caravan. We heard the same people on the radio the whole way.

Coinjock bridge

Jeff C. was following us on marine traffic, and noted that the caravan was moving in lockstep. He also observed that we had the coolest boat name in the group. I have to agree.

Between Coinjock and Dowry creek, there is one bridge that has to open. It's a long swinging bridge. We were lucky and had almost no wait.

The bridge tender was one of a kind. Most of them are gruff and business-like. This was a chatty old guy with a strong Southern drawl. He was telling his life story to one of the boats, and filling it with colorful wisdoms such as "the reason there is so many of us assholes is so that the turds have somewhere to go". Right on the radio for all boaters to hear. Meanwhile, I heard boaters on the emergency hailing channel, 16, asking how come the bridge wasn't answering on his required channel 13. 

At the Alligator bridge, we were supposed to provide our ship documentation number. One person was slow in finding it, and the bridge tender goes, "If you have it, great. If not, what the hell. Who cares? I don't really give a shit." He went on and on with his cursing and his stories. You couldn't have this guy in a movie scene because nobody would believe it was realistic. He announced that sometimes people in cars call his boss to say that he's closed traffic for too long. He said, "Usually it's women who have their panties in a bind because they gots to pee and I'm holding up traffic for the boats." 

His final comment that we were able to hear was that he said he's getting close to death, and he wants to just get a Harley and live out his final days. What a life. This guy just sits on his microphone and says whatever comes to his mind.

We arrived in Dowry Creek close to 4:00 with no incident and tied up for the night. Here is the view from the back of our boat.

I took a screen grab of our route from the Garmin Inreach. Today we spent most of the time in narrow rivers and canals. It was beautiful, but required full time concentration. Ann and I helped each other on lookout and took shifts taking breaks. Gimel got a bit impatient with the length of the trip, but he was a trooper. We covered almost 80 nautical miles today. 

After dinner, which we cooked on the boat, we took Gimel for a walk, and right behind our marina, encountered a quaint neighborhood, with seconds to spare before the sun set. 

On the way back to the boat after the sunset, I accidentally discovered (okay it was on purpose) that the marina restaurant was not out of key lime pie, my favorite dessert, and so I acquired same.

Tomorrow will be our first day with not so great weather. It will be gusty and a bit wavy. However, we're going to spend most of the day again in canals, and so we'll be protected. It should be about the same amount of travel as today, ending up in Beaufort. 

After our next stop, we will do our first ocean crossing from Beaufort to Wrightsville Beach. The forecast for Wednesday in the ocean is 4-5 foot waves and strong winds, so we've decided to make that our first day off. I have a bunch of work that I need to take care of for Harbor Labs, and we'll have a chance to recharge ourselves. I've scheduled a bunch of zoom meetings. The starlink makes this whole trip possible. Thursday the seas are forecast to be much better, and we'll plan on crossing then.